Garrett Morgan is a name many don’t know but I’ll wager given our fast paced society people would love to have a “little talk” with him. He is credited as the invented of the traffic light or red light or stop light. Amazing we don’t call it a more pleasant name such as the “go light” or the “green light”. Our view is negative because it has the ability to stop us dead in our tracks. Of course that is pretty much what Mr. Morgan had in mind, keeping traffic under control to make the road safer. This device takes away our complete freedom of recklessness in exchange for a measure safety for all. All those stop lights are timed with the legal speed limit to keep traffic flowing at it’s optimum rate. Sometimes it means we have to stop and be inconvenienced to allow for other to also be allowed to go.

I have noticed a nice little fact about those lights and side streets. It is that quite often if we will go to the red light instead of the shortcut to a street with no light we find ourselves moving along sooner than if we did do the short cut because of the flow of the surrounding traffic. Those nuisance traffic lights can be our friend. Our disobedience to them though can be costly such as a police officer catching us going through the light, red light cameras, or out right accidents. Traffic control devices are meant to be obeyed all the time and not just when we feel like it.

In the Bible we are given a “traffic control signal” known as the law. Galatians 3:24 says “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.” That schoolmaster or instructor was a slave who generally had proven himself enough to be trusted to guide the development of the future master(s) of the house of the upper class. These young boys were not allowed to even leave the house without the schoolmaster; that is until their graduation day.

God’s law is that schoolmaster in our lives. Though when we are first born into this world that same law condemned us all to Hell because we were all born sinful. Yet that same law also shows us our need for Christ and His salvation to get to Heaven. Once we do repent of our sins and ask Jesus to save us we still have that schoolmaster of the law, the difference is now it no longer condemns us to Hell but condemns our hearts over the sins we commit after our salvation. When we obey the law it doesn’t mean the signals are in our favor but it does mean that our life (traffic) can flow properly in God’s will. At the same time disobedience, running the redlights, causes accidents and gets us spiritual traffic tickets. If we avoid the light so we can just go already we find that it doesn’t go our way, we may have to wait even longer, we have an accident, or worse. Maybe it works out but is it really worth the cost of avoiding what the designer has given us to keep us where we need to be?